On the morning of March 30, 2003, Eric John Lerma, a known gangster, walked into an AMPM market in Coachella. Lerma had pulled a gun in the store the night before, and now he returned to the scene to remind witnesses of the rules of Coachella: If they called the cops, his gang would hurt them.

As he left, Lerma hurled one final insult. He scribbled a threatening note, signed with his full legal name, as if daringwitnesses to report him

Someone called the cops anyway. Police tracked Lerma to his house on Calle Camacho, only two blocks away. When confronted, he had nothing to hide.

“Yeah, I wrote the note. It was me,” Lerma told police, according to court documents. “Tell them people at the AMPM that they don’t know who they are f---ing with. I’ll get them … I represent my street.”

Lerma’s confession may seem brazen, but to the residents of Coachella, this sort of unapologetic violence is the hallmark of Varrios Coachella Rifa, a growing gang whose members outnumber Coachella police 10 to one. Authorities have described the gang, often known as VCR, as an “umbrella gang” that oversees six to eight other gangs, including Coachella Tiny Locos, 50 Boys and chapters identified by Avenue 52 and Avenue 53. Together, they have terrorized Coachella for decades.

Authorities now say that standard tactics are not enough to stop the gang, so the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office has taken Varrios Coachella Rifa to court to dismantle it for good. Court documents, made public this week as part of a gang injunction, give an unvarnished account of how the gang has overwhelmed the understaffed police department and intimidated the community into silence.

“Like human bullet magnets, the mere presence of a VCR gang member draws violence to his location.”

Kirsten Seebart, prosecutor

Varrios Coachella Rifa has approximately 340 members, of which law enforcement has identified about 300, and 124 have been named in court documents. The gang is aggressively recruiting children by offering protection, then turning them into “foot soldiers” for gang veterans, documents state. The gang has undisputed control of Coachella, but still clashes with Indio gangs, particularly South Side Indio.

Gang members don’t fear arrest because they know most witnesses will be too afraid to testify against them. Many residents are frightened to be seen in the presence of a police officer, “because that alone is enough to be labeled a snitch,” said Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy George Acevedo, a gang expert.

“Coachella gang members do not care about the devastation and destruction they cause in their community,” Acevedo said in court documents. “In fact, most Coachella gang members live to create chaos, fear and violence.”

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Varrio Coachella Rifa, an 'umbrella' gang in Coachella, has harassed the city for years.

Acevedo’s statements were filed as part of the DA’s gang injunction, which is a lawsuit that seeks to force VCR out of Coachella. If approved by a judge, the injunction will work like a restraining order, forbidding gang members from conducting any gang activity within a safe zone that covers a majority of Coachella. For five years, it would be illegal for members of Varrios Coachella Rifa to wear gang apparel or use gang signs or be seen with gang tattoos. The injunction would also establish a 10 p.m. curfew for all members, and forbid even as few as two of them from gathering in public.

A group of unidentified men flash gang signs in a photograph seized during a 2011 police raid.(Photo: Riverside County Superior Court documents)

A hearing on the proposal is scheduled for April 4.

To justify an injunction, the DA’s office is required to plead an extensive case in court, detailing why such heavy-handed restrictions are necessary. So far, court filings span more than 2,000 pages, including declarations from 371 police officers, each of whom have encountered the gangs at some point.

For example, police describe the arrest of Ramiro Aviles, a gang member, who was caught firing an AK-47 in his back yard in the center of Coachella on New Year’s Eve, 2014. Four months later, two other gang members were investigated after a .45-caliber bullet flew through the walls of an apartment complex, striking a bunk bed in a child’s bedroom. Six months after that, another gang member, Alejandro Magana, was arrested when he shot a woman during a carjacking. Magana, who was recently released from prison for spraying an apartment with bullets, claimed the carjacking was “an accident.”

Varrios Coachella Rifa has also been tied to numerous homicides, and its members are suspected in many more.

Of the 15 homicides in Coachella since 2012, 13 are considered gang related. In 2011, two VCR gang members, Jesse Sambrano and Anthony Lares were sentenced to life without parole for killing a 16-year-old Indio girl in a drive-by shooting. In 2014, gang member Angel Esparza was sentenced to death after being convicted of three murders, including executing a teenager outside the Coachella Boys and Girls Club in broad daylight.

Angel Esparza, who has a prominent Coachella gang tattoo, was sentenced to death for three murders.(Photo: Courtesy of the sheriff's department)

Together, these stories paint a portrait of a reckless gang that is heavily-armed and quick to resort to violence. But authorities go even further in court documents, insisting that Coachella gangs are dangerous even when they aren’t being actively violent. Officials say gang members endanger the city even when they are just standing around.

“Like human bullet magnets, the mere presence of a VCR gang member draws violence to his location,” wrote Deputy District Attorney Kirsten Seebart, lead prosecutor in the injunction case. “Residents in (Coachella neighborhoods) are in danger of being hit by stray bullets just sitting in their own homes or on their front steps.”

The injunction documents also include some harsh truths about the limitations Coachella faces when combating the gang menace. City officials openly admit that they don't have enough resources to keep gangs from spreading.

In a separate court filing, Lt. Misty Reynolds, the city's assistant police chief, said Coachella employs 33 police officers or .75 of an officer for every 1,000 residents.

The sheriff’s department recommended ratio is 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents, but for Coachella to reach that level, the police budget of $7.5 million would need to “almost double,” Reynolds said.

Law enforcement personnel at the sheriff's station in Thermal display a collection of guns seized from Varrio Coachella Rifa during raids.(Photo: Brett Kelman/The Desert Sun)

But increasing the budget isn’t an option, according to another court filing by City Manager David Garcia, who says Coachella is simply too poor to pay for more police.

Garcia said gangs have deterred businesses from moving in to Coachella, so the city’s largest source of sales tax revenue is gas stations. Coachella has nearly the same population as Palm Springs — about 45,000 — but only one-fifth the operating budget, Garcia said.

Nowhere are gangs more of a problem than on Harrison Street, which is the closest Coachella has to a commercial district. Garca said businesses here are “under siege,” by gangs, and many don't survive. Maxcy’s Grill, a popular restaurant, closed in 2015 after being robbed for the third time. WSS Shoes, a new retail store, was burglarized twice before it could even open.

“Our economic development efforts have been severely hampered by the strong, pervasive and growing presence of organized criminal gangs,” Garcia said. “These longstanding gangs prey on local businesses.”

Gang graffiti connected to Varrio Coachella Rifa is seen in Coachella in February 2016.

(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Reporter Brett Kelman can be reached at 760 778 4642 or by email at brett.kelman@desertsun.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @TDSbrettkelman.